AQ Operative Hoping to 'Kill Many' Sentenced

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January 08, 2008 12:01 PM

An al Qaeda-trained terrorist, who admitted to wanting to "kill many" in an overseas operation, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison today.

Sohail Anjum Qureshi, 30, originally of Pakistan, was arrested in October 2006 as he was about to board a plane bound for Islamabad at Heathrow airport.

Police discovered what Qureshi described as "gifts" for the mujahedeen fighters he was to meet in Pakistan at the time of his arrest.

Those "gifts" included "a night-vision optical device, back-packs, police-style ‘ASP’ batons, sleeping bags and camping gear."

Qureshi also had a computer hard drive with several downloaded "combat manuals" on it, 9,000 pounds, or about $16,800 at that time, and his "al wida," or farewell message.

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"If I am to become a Shaheed (martyr), then cry not and celebrate that day as if you celebrate a happy occasion," he wrote in his eight-page "al wida."

"He wanted to carry out terrorist acts overseas and gathered the equipment to help him do this," Peter Clarke, assistant commissioner of specialist operations of the Metropolitan Police Service, said. "Although we do not know what his exact plans, it is likely that coalition forces, possibly in Afghanistan, were his intended target."

During the investigation, police also discovered Qureshi's extensive use of the Internet to connect with fellow extremists.

Several message logs show his conversations with "a contact," to whom he told he was trained at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan in 1996 and served as the leader of another two years later.

He also had conversations with Samina Malik, the so-called "lyrical terrorist," who worked in a Heathrow airport shop and informed Qureshi of airport security measures.

Malik herself was sentenced to nine months in prison last November for possessing articles useful for terrorist purposes.

Qureshi also claimed he was a terrorism financier and fundraiser since "bullets cost money."

"Qureshi is a trained and committed terrorist, who by his own admission had contacts within Al-Qaeda since the mid-1990s," Clarke said. "We should all be thankful that the overwhelming evidence against Qureshi left him little choice other than to admit his guilt."